Our Lineage

Chenrezig Institute is affiliated with the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) and follows the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism, as taught by our founding teachers Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche.

This tradition is followed in many of the great monastic universities re-established in southern India after thousands of monks were forced to leave Tibet. It is based on the teachings of Lama Tsongkhapa (also known as Je Rinpoche), a revered Tibetan saint who received teachings on wisdom directly from Manjushri. His most famous text is the Lamrim Chenmo, which extensively outlines the whole graduated path to enlightenment.

The Mahayana tradition, or the bodhisattva path, emphasises the prime importance of the bodhicitta motivation: the intention to attain full enlightenment in order to benefit other beings by bringing them to enlightenment. Mahayana practitioners listen, reflect, and meditate on equanimity, loving kindness and compassion to develop this highest intention, and also to develop the wisdom to realise the nature of reality. Through the practice of the six perfections and deity yoga, they then attain full enlightenment.

As well as more secular and introductory courses, Chenrezig Institute offers general
and In-Depth programs related to
various texts of the Gelug tradition,
including those of Lama Tsongkhapa.

  • His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, the spiritual leader of Tibet, was born on the 6th of July 1935, to a farming family in the small hamlet of Taktser in Amdo, north-eastern Tibet. At the age of two, he was recognised as the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso.

    His Holiness has travelled to and given Buddhist teachings in more than 67 countries. He has received over 150 awards, honorary doctorates and prizes in recognition of his message of peace, non-violence, inter-religious understanding, universal responsibility and compassion. He has also authored or co-authored more than 110 books.

    In June 2011 Chenrezig Institute was honoured to host a day-long visit from His Holiness, during which he spoke to Sangha and lay students in the meditation hall, blessed the newly finished stupas at the Garden of Enlightenment and spoke to 4,000 guests on the lawns in front of the stupas.

  • Lama Thubten Yeshe was born in Tibet in 1935. At the age of six, he entered the great Sera Monastic University, Lhasa, where he studied until 1959, when the Chinese invasion of Tibet forced him into exile in India. Lama Yeshe continued to study and meditate in India until 1967, when, with his chief disciple, Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, he went to Nepal. Two years later he established Kopan Monastery, near Kathmandu, in order to teach Buddhism to Westerners.

    In 1984, after an intense decade of imparting a wide variety of teachings and establishing one FPMT activity after another, at the age of forty-nine, Lama Yeshe passed away. He was reborn as Ösel Hita Torres, the son of two of Lama’s students, in Spain in 1985 and recognized as the incarnation of Lama Yeshe by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1986.

  • Lama Zopa Rinpoche, born in Thami in the Mount Everest region of Nepal in 1946, was recognised soon afterwards by His Holiness Trulshik Rinpoche and five other lamas as the reincarnation of the great yogi Kunsang Yeshe, the beloved Lawudo Lama.

    The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) was established at the end of 1975. Lama Yeshe served as the organisation’s spiritual director until he passed away in 1984, at which time Rinpoche took over.

    Since then, under Rinpoche’s peerless guidance, the FPMT has continued to flourish. For nearly 40 years, while almost constantly travelling and teaching, Rinpoche oversaw the spiritual activities of the worldwide network of 160-plus centres, projects and social services that form the FPMT.

    Rinpoche was always utterly dedicated to fulfilling the wishes of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, holding this to be the utmost priority for the FPMT.

    Our precious Spiritual Director passed away on 13th April 2023.